


Her Vocation as a Daughter

by fawatson



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 21:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12044529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawatson/pseuds/fawatson
Summary: Perspectives on Hilary and her choices.





	Her Vocation as a Daughter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Her Vocation as a Woman](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6354370) by [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero). 



> Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and make no profit by them.

Mrs Mansell

It was exceedingly odd what memories popped into one’s head on one’s death-bed, thought Mrs Mansell. Of course, it was always possible this wasn’t her deathbed; she realised recovery _could_ be a possibility. But she rather thought not. She struggled to move her left leg and only two fingers of her left hand seemed to be working properly. Although she could speak, when she tried to communicate no one round her seemed to understand. Mrs Mansell had always been a believer in facing up to reality. She was used to certain people not listening to her – it had always seemed to her that Hilary had _never_ listened. But she had, at least, understood, even when she had totally ignored her mother’s wishes, utterly determined to go her own way, blind to the pitfalls of her choices. And when one’s daughter, who never visited unless she absolutely could not avoid it, was so in evidence in one’s own _bedroom_ of all places…well! 

There were quite a lot of happier memories Mrs Mansell could have replayed in her mind. Quite why the image of that particular tea-time had decided to surface she had no idea. Wasn’t one’s deathbed supposed to be the time when one’s life passed before one? The time to come to terms with past regrets, forgive old enemies, feel satisfaction at one’s accomplishments, generally achieve a sense of peace, and prepare to meet one’s maker? Hardly what she could expect from _that_ memory. As she recalled, Hilary had been especially awkward during that holiday. New people had moved to the area, with eligible sons, and she had invited them to dinner with some hope – vain as it turned out – that Hilary would make an effort. She had even treated her to a new frock for the occasion and the silly fool had insisted on picking the most god-awful colour that made her skin look sallow. And she smoked, not the occasional cigarette, held for effect in a nice tortoiseshell holder (which would have been perfectly acceptable) but _constantly_ , like a man. Silly girl had tried to pretend otherwise, but she had known. Hilary had _lied_ \- to her own mother. Well _that_ had come out later, not _that_ day. That day she was still pretending to have perfectly normal plans for her future. 

Yet still…she loved her, was comforted she cared enough to come, at what must have been short notice. She was her _daughter_ after all. A mother ought to be cherished and honoured by her daughter. Over the years Mrs Mansell had wondered what she did so wrong that Hilary seemed not to care. After much soul-searching she had come to the realisation the problem rested with Hilary, not herself. She had been a good mother, wanting only what any mother _would_ want for her daughter: to be happily married to a nice young man, to become a mother (with all the fulfilment that brought). In short, wanting her to be happy and settled and secure in a decent home. Mrs Mansell put a lot of stock in security. Eventually she had realised Hilary simply was not the right stuff of which that dream could be made real. She had been different, even as a little girl; and those differences deepened as she grew up. Not that she was a _bad_ person. She hadn’t brought shame on the family like Mabel Thompson’s daughter who had had a child out of wedlock and ended up an artist’s model. She might be odd but Hilary was, most definitely, respectable. 

Mrs Mansell’s eyes tracked her daughter’s movements round the bed, checking, adjusting, taking her pulse. She would stay to the end. Daughters were like that, even unconventional daughters like hers. Hilary perhaps especially so, given she’d become a doctor. A mother loved her sons but men _were_ different. One could not count on a son to sit by the bedside; she knew her daughter would not leave her to die alone. The bed dipped on one side as her daughter sat and took Mrs Mansell’s hand in hers, thumb gently soothing over the pulse in just the right place for comfort. It seemed Hilary had picked up some womanly skills at medical school after all. 

Valerie

The problem with Hilary, Valerie thought, not for the first time, was that she had no sense. She had lots of education – too much. (Everyone knew women with too much education never married. Hilary had, in the end, found a husband; but Julian was an odd sort of fish which just went to show…well…show _something_ \- though she wasn't quite sure what.) Valerie had never pretended to be clever, but she prided herself on being able to recognise it in others. Clearly her sister-in-law had many good qualities. Valerie understood she was a very good doctor. There was no doubting her intelligence, which had first shown itself when she excelled at her studies, and which gave her the ability to look at a medical problem, see though to its heart, and select the right treatment. In her own way she was brilliant. Valerie had known _that_ for several years. She just had no sense. 

Look at how she’d botched it years ago trying to tell her parents she wanted to study medicine. Wasting all that effort, making a mess of the simplest social duties. Actions might speak louder than words but _really_. It would have been much better to simply talk about her plans instead of sulking or moping and being that dark cloud on the horizon of every social occasion after she turned 21. It had started when she came home from Oxford for a short holiday just before sitting her finals and had dragged on for simply _months_. Valerie was a great believer in forthright discussion (notwithstanding the fact she rarely used it with anyone save her offspring). She’d been silent observer all those years ago, while mother and daughter, two strong-willed women alike in their determination, however much _un_ alike they had been in their interests, had each gone about trying to convince the other into doing what she thought best, without anyone speaking openly about the elephant that galumphed about the Mansell drawing-room. All of which had simply put parent and child at loggerheads for _weeks_ affecting the whole atmosphere so unnecessarily. Years later Valerie still shook her head whenever she remembered her weekly visits for afternoon tea during that year, remembered the conversations she and Mother Mansell had valiantly kept going, with absolutely _no_ help from Hilary who, as daughter of the house, ought to have been someone who could be relied upon to contribute. (Valerie had little time for anyone who shirked her social responsibilities.) 

However, she _was_ here, having arrived promptly after receiving the telegram informing her of the emergency. She might not be everyone’s kind of woman but she did not shirk her duty as a daughter when her mother was dying. And Hilary’s medical qualifications did come in handy when talking to the doctor. They had such an irritating habit of retreating behind medical jargon when what you really wanted was a straight answer to a simple question. 

All too clearly, though, Hilary was no nurse. Valerie lifted an etched crystal glass to the sick woman’s lips and tilted it slightly. Water spilled down her chin but a trickle went down the throat which swallowed convulsively. Gently Valerie wiped the spilled water with a cloth she had ready and tried again. Eventually, she succeeded in getting half the glass into the parched mouth. Silver-backed brushes with soft bristles were then used to smooth the older woman’s wispy grey hair. There was nothing much she could do about washing it; and the carefully arranged coiffures her mother-in-law preferred could not be achieved. But at least it could be kept tidy. Valerie thought she saw gratitude in the eyes. Her body looked wasted and frail; the skin on Mrs Mansell’s face was assuming the stretched appearance of a death mask. But the eyes remained alive. This last cruel illness had not – yet – robbed Mother Mansell of her intelligence. If Valerie had anything to say, it would not rob her of dignity either. 

Hilary finished taking her mother’s blood pressure and took the instrument over to the dressing table on the far wall near the bedroom door.

Valerie moved to intercept her return to the bedside. “How long has she left?” she whispered. 

Nora

Seated as she was near the door, waiting for instructions, Nora could not help but overhear. The question was not intended for her; nonetheless Nora was keenly interested. Had she been asked beforehand if Miss Hilary would return to care for her mother in her final illness, Nora thought she would have likely guessed wrong. Not that she ever expected to be asked. Mrs Mansell had never been the type to gossip with servants, would have considered the idea vulgar had it ever been suggested. She had, of course, been fully aware some people did discuss all sorts of things with their maids. It was not something encouraged in the Mansell household, though, had gossip been condoned, there would have been lots Nora could say. However, Mrs Mansell had set the tone higher; and Nora had complied with the standards established by the lady of the house, as a good maid should. This was a good job in a nice household. Nora knew better than to jeopardise her place. A place which was now coming to an end. Her guess would be the end would come today, maybe tomorrow. Then there would be a week or so while the funeral was organised. Possibly her help would be requested to close up the house; that would make sense since she was owed a minimum of two weeks’ notice (or pay in lieu thereof). 

Nora was under no illusions. The days were long since gone when trusted servants who had stayed with a family for years were pensioned off. It had, in any case, always been more something the aristocracy did, not this kind of family. (And only if they were solvent – increasingly unlikely with the upper class these days.) Mrs Valerie wouldn’t need or want her. Her own household was long since established, and in a different part of the country. (Mrs Valerie no longer lived fairly close to Mrs Mansell; and her visits had dwindled to four times a year.) Even if there was an offer, Nora would not want to move so far from her own family. As for Miss Hilary…. 

When she had joined the Mansell household, Nora had simply thought of Miss Hilary as the unwed daughter. In due course she had expected her to make a match with someone suitable and set up her own household, possibly nearby, possibly half-way round the country (all depending on who she married). She knew how these things worked. Miss Hilary went off to Oxford, which was unusual, but Nora had known that some young women went to finishing school, always, it seemed in foreign places like France and Switzerland. She presumed Oxford was the English version. She approved of that. Why spend all that money paying foreigners for something that could undoubtedly be done just as well – if not better – here at home? Her first inkling that Miss Hilary’s college was not the same had come when she served afternoon tea one day when Miss Hilary was home for the holidays. She couldn’t help overhearing their discussion about a very _peculiar_ topic for a young lady to know anything about. Nora prided herself on being unshockable; it was a good quality in a domestic servant. Her best friend Mary had had any number of _peculiar_ tales to tell about the ramshackle family she worked for. Nora had never had to be concerned about anything like _that_ from the Mansells. She remembered how, quite soon after that tea party there had been a kerfuffle over Miss Hilary’s plans to stay on at the college to become a _doctor_. Nora had heard there were lady doctors; she’d never known one. She wasn’t quite sure she’d want to know one (though perhaps it was nicer to go to another lady for _some_ things – less embarrassing). 

And now here she was, Miss Hilary as Dr Hilary. It was something that satisfied Nora’s sense of right and wrong. A mother ought to be cared for by her daughter when she was ill. It didn’t always happen. Every so often a mother raised a rotten-un. Or the mother was no good and reaped what she had sown. But a decent mother deserved respect; and the respect paid to the dying was sort of paying one’s dues. It was proper. Mrs Mansell had done right by her daughter; now her daughter was doing right by her. Seeing Miss Hilary here gave Nora the satisfaction of knowing she served a decent family. Well she had known that all along, notwithstanding the shocking things Miss Hilary had said all those years ago. Young people did like to shock their parents. She may have become a lady doctor but she knew where her duty lay regardless. 

Hilary

How long was a good question. How long could the human body endure? How long did one’s spirit fight to keep breath in the body? How long did the soul strive to communicate those last crucial messages to the ones who would be left behind? How long was a piece of string? 

The clock on the wall of her mother’s bedroom relentlessly kept time, chiming musically every hour. Hilary’s professional side wanted to note the results from her monitoring of blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing on some non-existent chart each time the bells were struck. But this was not hospital, that familiar and comfortable environment. This was ‘home’, that familiarly _un_ comfortable place she was drawn back to periodically by duty and the inevitable attachment between a child and her parent. She remembered that wall clock being in the hallway directly across from the drawing room door. She remembered learning to tell time on that clock, as a little girl for whom time had stretched long and slow. Now, as an adult, time ran more swiftly. When _had_ that clock been moved here, to her mother’s bedroom? Such cruelty to have it on the wall opposite the bed, so her mother could mark the changing hour during her waking moments. Hilary had sat with enough patients to know how endlessly slowly the time could pass for someone in painful recovery, while it sprinted like Atalanta when patients were being drawn toward death. 

When she thought about it, Hilary was conscious of a duality in her thinking. Really, she tried _not_ to think about it. She had never been close to her mother. It was hard to feel close to someone who didn’t seem to value what you could do well (Hilary had many memories of her mother’s somewhat dismissive praise for her good school reports) who seemed overwhelmingly focused on things Hilary did not value (and at which Hilary had never excelled). Regardless, she also had the same memories most little children shared of loving moments: of her mother bandaging a skinned knee and ‘kissing it better’; of bringing home a painting from school and showing it to her mother who gave her a hug and praised how nicely she had drawn the trees and flowers; of twirling in circles before her mother in the brand new dress that had been bought for some birthday party she was going to, and of her mother French braiding her hair and tying it with a beautiful royal blue ribbon; of her mother cuddling and soothing her with nonsense, when Hilary had the measles and woke in the middle of the night feeling hot and sticky and headachy. These memories battled with other memories, also old: of her mother’s exasperation when Hilary got into a fight at school with a boy who had been picking on a younger pupil, and her indignation that her mother _was not being fair_ when she was punished; her mother’s constant reminders about deportment and manners, and periodic lectures about her clothes; her mother’s deep disappointment when Hilary finally told her family that she had applied to medical school. 

Hilary could remember wanting her mother’s approval as she grew up, feeling upset when it was not immediately forthcoming, when she had to work at it (and always felt she failed because her talents did not lie in those things of which her mother approved). She had dealt with it, as many young adults do, by putting physical distance between them, and visiting her family infrequently. Her father had eventually come round, and had even shown absurd pride when she qualified. Her mother had had been slower to accept. As her love of medicine consumed her, Hilary had simply found it easier to make excuses why visits _from_ her parents could not happen; instead she would travel to Shropshire periodically. After her father’s death several years ago, those visits had dwindled to one week every summer and a few days at Christmas. 

Her marriage to Julian, of whom her mother disapproved because of his age, had only increased Hilary’s emotional distance. Hilary had never fully forgiven her mother’s testy response: ‘Really, dear, that surgeon you used to see would have been _far_ more suitable,’ (especially since Hilary also recalled her mother had not liked David at the time and seemed only to approve of him after the fact). Following the wedding Hilary had forthrightly announced that henceforth bi-annually Christmas would be spent with Elaine Fleming. If anything Christmas that year had left Hilary feeling more in sympathy with her mother – at least until she next saw her the next Christmas. Somehow Mrs Mansell had an unparalleled talent for irritating her daughter. Nonetheless, she _had_ charmed Julian. In the years that followed a pattern had developed that six times a year (on the third weekend of every ‘odd’ month) her mother came to visit, like clockwork. Hilary’s previous excuses about having no space because she lived in digs had not been challenged while she was single; but she and Julian were now a married couple renting a two bedroom cottage. Mrs Mansell had swept excuses aside and simply booked her train ticket. As she stood vigil before her mother’s deathbed, Hilary wondered, had those visits been an attempt at rapprochement? It was too late to ask. Even had the stroke not damaged the speech centre of her mother’s brain, it was not the kind of thing one could ask a woman on her death-bed. 

Mrs Mansell

Mrs Mansell had abandoned trying to talk. Had she been able to she would have asked for a fly swatter to be employed. She might have little feeling in her left side but there was no problem with her right and that fly walking up her arm tickled dreadfully. She hated insects in the house (nasty, dirty things) and would have expected Hilary to be more concerned about the germs they brought in. Though perhaps her daughter didn’t think it worth bothering given she would be dead soon. Unless she was going to live? It was a horrifying thought and Mrs Mansell’s eyes widened; she looked round the room in panic and tried to reach out with her right hand. Valerie patted it gently, then reached across with some water, tilting the glass carefully so the liquid just wet her lips. Mrs Mansell jerked her head from side to side, jostling the glass so it spilled over her cheek and soaked the pillow. She did _not want_ to live like this! Valerie made a slight sound of frustration and supported her mother-in-law’s head while she swapped the wet pillow for the dry one next to it. Valerie’s face was strained but she gamely smiled and said something reassuring before excusing herself. She spoke briefly with Hilary before leaving, taking Nora with her. 

Sunshine streamed through the bevelled glass of the bedroom window, setting rainbows dancing on the wall next to Hilary. One highlighted Hilary’s hair making it almost pretty; if only the girl had a more becoming haircut. Never had she had the slightest notion of how to make the most of her looks. But the habit of a lifetime’s frustration with her daughter’s limitations could not really distract Mrs Mansell from her current focus. Hilary’s back was turned as she fidgeted with some sort of instrument on the dresser. She willed Hilary to look around and, flailing wildly, managed to knock the glass off the table with her good hand. Hilary did not notice. Finally, as the clock chimed, Hilary brought her stethoscope over to the bed and pulled down the covers to Mrs Mansell’s waist preparing her listen to her heart. Once again Mrs Mansell shook her head, this time trying to protest. Only a croak emerged. 

Startled, Hilary met her mother’s eyes and stilled briefly, before she sat on the bed and took Mrs Mansell’s one good hand in her own firm grip. They sat silent together: Mrs Mansell’s eyes pleading, Hilary’s grimly watching. Finally, Hilary sighed, cleared her throat and spoke. 

“It won’t be long now, Mother. I cannot say _how_ long precisely, but you have not long to live.” 

She hesitated. It was never an easy thing to say to any patient; there were, in fact, some patients she would never dream of saying it to – patients who found platitudes more comforting, who would only be needlessly distressed by the truth. Her mother was not one of them. Nonetheless, she would never have guessed just how hard it was to do this with one’s own mother. 

“My best _professional_ estimate is that you have a few more hours. You’ll wake less and in the end just slip away in your sleep.” 

Mrs Mansell closed her eyes in relief. She had never been someone who placed much stock in overt displays of affection, and neither gave them easily nor sought them from others. She had been raised to believe actions speak louder than words. Open displays of love were too easy. What was important was being reliably _there_ year by year, and honourable and truthful. She squeezed Hilary’s hand and smiled – a crooked smile because the stroke had affected the muscles in her face, but obviously one of relief. Her daughter had told her the truth. 

“Stay?” It came out as a slurred whisper, only recognisable because here, at this very last, finally mother and daughter were on the same page. 

Hilary nodded.


End file.
